An important scholar keeps emailing this listserv I am on, questioning Manuela Picq’s statements that she was beaten by police during her arrest and detention last week. He says it is important not to distort facts and that researchers must be objective. I understand that, of course, but do not really understand him, and I … More Manuela Picq

When I was a child, I would read fairy tales in which most characters were either royalty or peasants. I did not know the word peasant and misread it as “pheasant.” So I would visualize these tales, in which many characters were pheasants that spoke and lived like people. I imagined the pheasants’ wives and … More Des mots

See what you think of this. These white folks, who call the other white folks “backwards,” “rednecks,” “racist,” and “trash,” hate to have their whiteness sullied by these other white folks. They wouldn’t want colored folks to think they were like those white folks. So, they latched onto the thing that they hate about backwards white southerners … More Black post

A local musician, one of my colleagues, and some other people have been going on about how — if I understand them — it is unfortunate that Dylann Roof associated himself with the Confederate battle flag, because that flag has nothing to do with racial violence. It does have everything to do with their families’ … More On southern pride

Meanwhile — what day should I order those shoes? To try to have them arrive June 5 … or June 17 … or even wait until then to order them in the first place? (What if they disappear in the meantime?) This resembles frivolity, but is not. Axé.

My current television fascination is the European Borgia (not to be confused with The Borgias) — I want to be Césare Borgia, move to Barcelona, and ask Dame Eleanor Hull whether this program offers a realistic depiction of the culture of the time, and to what extent human nature and the conditions of life for … More Unas preguntas televisivas — on culture and human nature